


The Other End of the Telescope

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leif swore to Nanna that he'd go on a mission to rescue Raquesis, and with the help of his new Agustrian in-laws, he does exactly that. Piecing a fractured family back together isn't the easiest thing in the world, but Raquesis feels she's earned her happy ending and is determined to have it. Repost of an unfinished work from FFNet. Standalone sequel to the Azel-centric "While You Were Sleeping," also at FFNet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Summer Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leif fulfills his promise to find Raquesis... who is nowhere near the Yied Desert and very much alive.

Agustria 779

When Alva told her that the rebel army seized Agusty and was now marching westward toward Silvail, she refused to care. How many rebellions had there been in the eight miserable years she'd spent in her shabby birdcage? Too many. When young Tristan repeated the rumors that Prince Ares himself led the rebels, Raquesis felt a wild, thrilling hope stab at her heart... but only for a moment. There'd been one False Ares already, some golden-haired boy plucked from the woods south of Nordion. He'd ended up dead like his "father" Eldigan, his head struck off after his inevitable defeat.

Raquesis didn't let herself believe any more. She'd stay here in Silvail, in the "apartment" that was really a gussied-up dungeon. Alva and his nephew Tristan would guard her, and Tristan's sister Jeanne would come to her for sewing lessons three times a week, and so it would go until the end of her days. A puppet queen in her miniature court, too high-born to send to the prison camps and too dangerous to be made a martyr— and therefore left to rot in the shadows.

Only when Tristan came to her one autumn afternoon, his face flushed and damp with sweat and his voice cracking in panic, did Raquesis think this latest pack of rebels might actually be a cause for concern.

"My uncle's surrendered," Tristan gasped, and Raquesis lifted one corner of her mouth at Alva's survival skills. The last of her retainers knew when to fold. "He… he told me to guard you until my last breath."

Alva's pragmatism extended only to his own survival, apparently.

"Just surrender," Raquesis said to Tristan. "Surrender to whoever it is this time; you'll be no help to anyone if you die."

"But Your Majesty…"

"The rebels might be better masters to serve than the Empire. Who knows anymore?"

She took a seat beneath the small and dingy window that illuminated her sitting room and put her needle again to the piece of embroidery she'd been working on the past few weeks. It was a segment of a heraldic tapestry of lions, crowns, roses and swords that her captors would never allow her to display, but annoying them with her sewing was one of the few pleasures Raquesis had left to her. After a few more moments of listening to Tristan's panting breaths, she said without raising her eyes from the needlework, "Go, Tristan. If this Prince Ares can hold Silvail for more than a day he can use your loyalty and strength."

From the corner of her vision she saw the youth kneel, yelp out a "Yes, Your Majesty," and withdraw to the hallway— where, by the sound of things, he remained.

"Chivalry makes such fools of men," Raquesis said as she threaded her needle with crimson wool. She didn't care if Tristan heard.

Raquesis didn't even have time to finish a single rose before she heard boots in the hall. Still she kept at her work, even as Tristan sent up pleas to the intruders not to cause harm to Her Majesty, but sound of the voice that answered Tristan, a request that he stand aside, did catch her attention. That voice belonged to neither Grannvale nor Agustria. Mercenaries from Isaach?

Her hand shook, just a little, as she sent the needle into the cloth again, but she steadied herself as a pair of boots crossed the worn carpet toward her. The boots stopped a few paces away.

"If I am to be executed I request a swordsman to perform the deed and not a clumsy oaf of an axeman," she said, her eyes fixed on the red wool in her hands.

"So it really is you, Mother."

This bizarre statement and the way it was spoken made Raquesis lift her head at last to stare at the newcomer. He was a young man of about Tristan's age, not as tall or well-built as Tristan, but impressive all the same in his gleaming white armor. A shock of brown hair, large dark eyes, the unmistakeable sound of Northern Thracia in his voice...she'd fallen in love with its sound, once upon a time.

"Leif?"

"I've grown up a bit since Tahra," he said, and his beautifully-colored lips formed a smile that was all Leif in its mischief. Raquesis didn't smile back. She felt the embroidery hoop would splinter in her hands.

"Leif, how did you get here?"

"By way of Belhalla. Never mind that, Mother." And he dipped down on one knee then, so his head was within easy reach, as though he were a child again. She almost did stretch out her hand to touch his lush dark hair, but Raquesis remembered that she had been a queen for the space of one summer, and so she gave him her hand to kiss and not for a loving pat. Leif nuzzled the back of her hand with his still-smooth cheek just as he had when he was a little boy. This softened her, and the embroidery hoop rolled away as Raquesis got to her feet to properly embrace Leif.

"My comrade here would like to meet you," he said, and Raquesis looked past Leif to see this "comrade" from Isaach who'd told Tristan to stand down. Another boy of an age with Leif or Tristan, tall and slender, with a shock of wheat-colored hair. Isaach did produce a few young men with fair hair and long limbs, but something didn't quite fit...

And somehow, looking into his eyes, she knew.

"Dermott."

"Mother." Not the childish "Mama" of their last parting, but "Mother," just like Leif and yet so unlike Leif.

They collided with one another like two drops of quicksilver flowing into one. His voice cracking, her throat closing on so many unspoken endearments, his tears hot and wet against her face and her own eyes blurred and stinging.

"My boy," she heard herself say. "My boys. You found me. My boys found me."

Even when she collected herself Raquesis couldn't bear to let either of them go, and so she stood between them, arm in arm with these lovely youths as she bade Tristan to get up off the floor to meet their liberators- the prince of Leonster and the prince of their own beautiful Nordion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, we will find out why she's in Silvail and what's up with the queen of Agustria business. As for Leif being so familiar with her, given he pretended she was his mother as a child and is now technically her son-in-law, as far as he's concerned he's legit family.


	2. Mother and Child Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raquesis has rehearsed this particular reunion many times. It doesn't go entirely as she pictured it.

They made a curious procession as the boys escorted Raquesis down corridors she hadn't seen in long years.  Dermott walked with his arm still locked in her own while Tristan followed behind, but it was Leif who took the lead, constantly glancing back or even outright walking backwards a few steps while he did his best to convey the last eight years of their lives. Crucial details that might have wrenched at her heart were blurred by Leif's steady rain of chatter, but Raquesis decided it was likely for the best.  Lord Sigurd's son was now the conquering hero enthroned at Belhalla, all the old villains were dead, and the Prince Ares whom Raquesis had doubted was her own nephew beyond any doubt.  Except now he was King Ares.  
   
"His Majesty had to return to Agusty," said Dermott when he could get a word in. "He wants to see you there as soon as possible... if you can travel that is, Mother."  
   
"I can travel," she said, sounding a little sharp, perhaps, but her world was a-spin.  
   
 And her daughter was married.   
   
“Just wait until you see Nanna, Mother," said Leif, and that mischief showed again in his sparkling eyes.  

He really was the most remarkable blend of his true parents-- in one moment he looked the image of Quan in his glory, all reckless élan, and in the next he was Ethlyn all over again with warmth and love radiating like sunshine.  She almost wanted him to fall silent, to give her a few moments of peace so she might take stock of it all, but at the same moment she couldn't bring herself to not let Leif prattle on in his way.  There was something of the ten-year-old about him even yet... then again, he was only eighteen.  Raquesis had come to appreciate how young that truly was.  
   
At last they reached the chamber where Raquesis had received guests during her three-month reign. Raquesis felt a little leap in her heart on seeing Alva's grizzled auburn head.  He stood flanked by two guards but was clearly not harmed and the expression on his face upon seeing her alive was transcendent.  
   
"Dermott, please release this man.  He has been my support through all of these trials."  This couldn't relate the full scope of what Alva had managed before, during, and after their brief rebellion, but Raquesis could tell Dermott of all that in days to come.  "Alva, where is Jeanne?"  
   
"She is healing the wounded," Alva replied as he got to his feet; he'd nearly prostrated himself before her on his release.  "They're converting the ballroom into an infirmary."  
   
"Nanna's working there also, Mother." Leif tugged at her hand and fairly dragged her toward the ballroom before Raquesis could ask how many casualties there'd been and if anyone sympathetic to her had fallen.   
   
The ballroom had looked worse, Raquesis thought.  There'd been more bodies stacked there at Chagall's final defeat.  Raquesis quickly spotted Jeanne, now engaged in treating a young man's bloodied leg, and she immediately began scanning the room looking for a little blonde girl-- and then caught herself, because 'little girl' was entirely the wrong thing to seek.  But the young woman of an age with Jeanne there in the sky-blue gown, the one with hair that was a lighter and brighter shade of yellow than Dermott's...

"Nanna!"

 Almost as graceful as a dancer, Raquesis thought as her daughter slowly turned in her direction. Without a dancer’s lightness, though— there was a sense of being grounded in her movements, but that might’ve been related to the obvious curve of Nanna’s belly. Raquesis knew better than to have her first exchange of words with Nanna be about that; instead she took her daughter by the shoulders and gazed into Nanna’s face.  Clear blue eyes looked back at her with a measure of cold disbelief.

“You did end up taller than me.  I thought that you’d be.”  She brushed a stray wisp of golden hair away from Nanna's cheek. "I’d hoped that you’d be.”

“Oh, Mother.”  Nanna blinked once, then twice, and then the tears came spilling over.  
   
"Shh, my baby girl."  Raquesis feared for a moment that her daughter had, in her absence, been molded into an ice princess. But no, Nanna was as warm and yielding in her arms as Dermott, and Nanna’s tears were just as free in spilling over. Her own eyes stinging from salt, Raquesis cleared her throat enough to whisper, “You still have my ear-rings.”

“Father gave them to me when I turned fourteen,” Nanna said as she brushed her fingers against one of the pale sapphire droplets.  “I still carry the Runesword you left for me.”  
   
Pride was flowing through her like a stream of liquid-amber; Raquesis felt it might form a lump in her throat large enough to silence her for the night.

"And I delivered the letter," Nanna added.   

“Letter?”

“The one you left me to give to Ares. It took me seven years, but I managed it.”

The lump of congealed pride subsided just a little— not that she wasn’t proud of Nanna for delivering that letter, as it was a wonderful thing, but the idea of Nanna cherishing her little mission for seven long years reminded Raquesis that her daughter was not, after all, solely herself in miniature.

Nanna sensed something amiss, as she then looked down with those keen blue eyes and asked, “Did they mistreat you, Mother?”

“Well, of course they—” Mid-sentence it occurred to Raquesis what Nanna was truly asking.  “No, nothing like that.  Threats, yes, but nothing…”  
   
“We can go someplace private if you don’t want to talk about it here.”

“There’s nothing,” Raquesis repeated, and she definitely saw now what baby girl Nanna was: a married woman trained in the ways of the healing arts who had likely interviewed other women about mistreatment at the hands of the empire.  
   
At that moment, with the conversation on the edge of a great darkness, Raquesis saw once more familiar figure there in the ballroom, hovering at the edge of the drama. She let go of Nanna.

“Oh, Finn.  You were here too?  Leif didn’t mention it.”  
   
The air in the ballroom had a charge to it then, the heavy feeling that came before the strike of high-level thunder magic. Her image of their reunion, should it ever come to pass, had changed its shape many times over their years, and in some way Raquesis was not surprised at all in how it now played out. Finn crossed the room in a few quick strides as though the floor weren’t strewn with young men on pallets while Raquesis remained in place, her feet turned to roots. He, too, went down upon one knee in front of her, but this gesture was all grave deliberation despite the dramatic sweep of the white mantle over his shoulder; Finn showed none of Leif's affectionate play or Alva's near-desperate relief.  She could feel no warmth from his hands, encased as they were in gloves, and precious little warmth in the dry touch of his lips against her own hand.  Raquesis lowered her lashes halfway and made herself smile because she knew in that moment they made a perfect picture, fit for a storybook or a tapestry, the queen and her knight.  She knew it, and she knew that he knew it.  
   
Unlike in her fantasies, he did not ask to be forgiven— not now, not yet. Just as well, perhaps, since she wouldn't have to deny him, either by words or silence, in front of their witnesses.


	3. Aspirations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past is never fully laid to rest, even as Raquesis tries to make sense of the present, one fragment at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nordioncest warning. Master/apprentice relationship warning. Those are the only warnings this story may carry, but they definitely pertain to this chapter.

_Eldigan carried her up the stairs in a cloud of crinkled silk and white-rose perfume. Raquesis rested her head upon his shoulder and looked up through her lashes at Lord Brother’s lips, wondering if she might at last be on the verge of tasting them._

_“Where are you going, Eldigan?”_

_Raquesis knew the voice of her brother’s friend but she still squirmed in Eldigan’s arms so as to get a look at Quan. Her first thought was that Quan was planning to interfere, but then she realized the prince of Leonster had his apprentice by the arm. A garland of flowers stolen from the ballroom perched on Finn’s hair like a wedding crown._

_Eldigan had stopped short at the head of the stairs. Raquesis thought she could hear his heart pounding as Quan approached them._

_“Looking for a room?” asked the prince with a laugh less jovial than it was giddy._

_Eldigan didn’t speak, and Raquesis watched as he touched his tongue to his lips to wet them. So he was ashamed, after all. She was of half a mind to wriggle out of his arms and run off._

_“Come on,” Quan was saying. “I know a room with a bed large enough for all of us.”_

_Quan might’ve had more wine than blood in his veins in that moment, but Eldigan was sober, and when he followed Quan down the hall it was all of his own volition, Raquesis knew._

_“Eldie…”_

_She closed her eyes and pressed her face against the curve of his neck as he carried her away._

-x-

They feasted that night in Silvail because there was always feasting when a great castle fell, or at least there was if the castle had any food. Silvail had food, though at present disorder still reigned in the Great Hall and the celebration was only a semi-private dinner in a smaller chamber that once had been a lovely space. Now its ornate ceiling of gilt and molded plaster was coming down in flakes, but it was hastily made festive anyway with makeshift decorations to celebrate House Nordion and the line of Hezul. 

Some of the banners were singed and others bloody, Raquesis noted. They’d come straight from the battlefield.  
   
Tristan and Jeanne both were looking often at the other young people, and Raquesis was struck by a certain lack of… enthusiasm… in the faces of her servants.After a time she understood what it was that made Tristan and Jeanne both less than enthused at the presence of Delmud and Nanna—the realization that they were surrogates for these beautiful golden-haired creatures from foreign lands. But they were polite, of course, bobbing their heads with the right degree of awe as Alva explained to them that Lord Finn was the knight who'd struck the final blow against mad King Chagall so many years before.  
   
Raquesis knew that story too well, and her attention drifted back to the banners. She stared at one of them for a time—a flag of blue and argent featuring two crossed lances as its emblem, strangely familiar and yet not placeable.  
   
“That’s not the flag of Leonster,” she said aloud, and Dermott supplied a ready answer.  
   
"It's the flag of New Thracia, Mother."  
   
"is it... aspirational, Dermott?"  
   
"No, Mother.” He was a clever boy indeed, not to stammer and stare at her for that query. ”Lord Sel-- I mean, the emperor invested Leif as King before we departed Belhalla."  
   
"If Leif is here, then who is governing this New Thracia?” she asked then, for Raquesis really had no idea what of New Thracia might exist beyond her own children. And Finn, of course. 

"I think Father might be the best qualified to tell you the story," said Dermott, which wasn’t at all what Raquesis wanted to hear. 

All New Thracia ever had been was a dream, and the last Raquesis knew of it, it was the dream of a solitary knight waging his secret war in the shadows, a dream invested in tiny children. That it had come true, while her own kingdom shrank to a single suite of tatty apartments, didn’t sit well with her… or perhaps it was only that her first banquet in nigh on a decade didn’t sit well in her stomach.

-x-

_Eldigan wasn’t there when she woke. Raquesis came around slowly from from a fairly delicious sleep. She was in a soft bed with a fur-lined comforter draped over her and the fur felt wonderful over her naked skin. It was so pleasant to lie there she only opened her eyes to see if Lord Brother was still with her, and he wasn’t. Neither was Prince Quan. Instead she and Finn were tucked into the bed together, crushed flowers from the garland scattered around them like it was a bridal night and they the happy couple. A few petals clung to Finn’s hair. Raquesis reached out to pluck the least-damaged of the petals and at her touch Finn opened his eyes so quickly she knew he hadn’t been fully asleep._

_“They left us here,” she said, and she pressed the pale-pink rose petal into a mush between her finger and thumb._

_Finn sat up slowly, even gingerly, and he looked around the room like he thought someone might be spying on them. Raquesis wondered if it’d hurt Finn any when Prince Quan had his way with him. Eldigan hadn’t hurt her at all, though he kept stopping to ask if it did._

_“It looks as though we slipped away to do this, just ourselves,” Finn whispered. She wasn’t sure if he was awed at the way that Eldigan and Quan had covered their tracks or if he was frightened by it._

_“I’m not giving you any credit for it,” Raquesis said. She shut her eyes against him and tried to go back into that perfect warm sleep, but even after Finn settled back down beside her, she wasn’t able to turn off her thoughts and slip away._

_She opened her eyes to see Finn staring back at her, and again she wasn’t sure if he were awed or just afraid at the way they’d ended up. They were, Raquesis decided as she wished vainly for sleep, both a little horrified at one another._

-x-

Back in the Queen’s Apartments for the first time since her summer’s rebellion collapsed, Raquesis was delighted by the things done for her pleasure.  Some of her own needlework was already on the wall— one of those works of lions and blood-red roses that so annoyed the regime sent by Belhalla.  Fresh flowers, autumn lilies and goldenrod and a single white rose, sat in a vase on one small table.  Some clever person had even scrounged up some fine things for her vanity table— ivory combs, a gilded hairbrush and hand mirror, a bottle of perfume.

She settled in at the vanity table and looked into the slightly clouded mirror at the reflection of her supposed consort.

“I am, or was, Her Most August Majesty the sovereign queen of Agustria.”  She picked up the hairbrush, glanced at the unfamiliar monogram in pearls on its back, and began to cautiously stroke it against her long hair.  “This does not make you Agustria’s king.”

“I never would’ve imagined it did, given that we've committed to this campaign in support of Agustria's true king of holy lineage,” said Finn’s faded reflection.  
   
"If you do think it degrades my status to be married to a mere foreign noble I can have you made a duke or something like that," Raquesis said as she continued to brush out her hair. “All the old titles of the Dominion are vacant.”  
   
"I don't see that it would be necessary," he replied.  He had not bothered to so much as take off his mantle, and looked as though he planned to leave once she’d finished talking at him.

Raquesis set the hairbrush down, quite deliberately, on the table.  

“Let me be clear.  I’ve had a long time to think about all the ways in which I no longer love you.” The image in her mirror didn’t flinch, which disappointed her. “Still, for the sake of the children, I can endure your company for a time.  A short time.”

“Until we return to Thracia, then, and see Leif and Nanna enthroned?"

That sounded like too long a time.  Meeting Ares in Agusty, meeting the young emperor in Belhalla, with Nanna's baby born somewhere along the way...  
   
"Are you planning to rush back to Thracia so that our daughter can deliver her child on Thracian soil?"  
   
"Of course not.” Was that a note of offense in his voice? She couldn’t tell anymore. “Nanna would like the child to be born in Nordion.” 

This unexpectedly sweet gesture on Nanna’s part made Raquesis blink, but only for a moment.

“Are you satisfied with this arrangement?” she asked, before she could soften any further at the thought of her children going home, to her own home.

“You’re safe and you’ve been reunited with the children.  I can ask for nothing more.”

“You ask for nothing more, and that’s why I loathe you.”

 She stared into the mirror, her hand clenched around the hairbrush hard enough that she could feel the gold filigree imprinting into her fingers, but the image in her mirror bore her loathing the way he bore everything— impervious, implacable, and so far beyond the reach of her words that he might as well have existed only in the faded glass.


	4. The Black Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raquesis comes face-to-face with the living image of Eldigan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, Nordioncest warning & master/apprentice relationship warning.

The royal party had no desire to tarry in Silvail once the city was secured for King Ares, not with Agusty as a necessary stop before the return to Nordion. They found Raquesis a beautiful white mare, “gentle as a spring breeze,” for the journey— a _gentle horse_ , the perfect mount for a young girl learning to ride… or a frail old dowager. A medley of sharp responses swirled through her mind at the footman’s innocent comment, but Raquesis put on a smile and batted her eyelashes and made the footman feel he’d actually done her a favor. She’d deal with the horse situation soon enough; for now, it was enough to be getting out of Silvail.

In truth, she hadn’t been near a horse since they’d locked her away eight years before.

“Are you well, Mother?” 

So Nanna asked, a mere three hours into the first day’s ride. Raquesis smiled again through her teeth and said she was well, though already it felt that someone had jammed a pike into her hip. The blood of her ancestors would give her the strength to endure this, also. If they needed to rest, it would be on Nanna’s account, not hers.

Nanna didn’t plead her condition, and so their party put in seven full hours of riding that day with only a brief mid-day rest. They halted for the night in a village thirty miles from Silvail, and the stab through her hip on dismounting made Raquesis see a flash of red before her eyes. 

“Your Majesty?”

“It’s nothing, Tristan.” 

All the same she asked for a soothing bath that night. She could pass it off as a luxurious whim for an indulgence long-denied, and so made the most of said indulgence, complete with rose oil in the water and the softest towel at their hosts’ disposal.

-x-

Their hosts did not have enough space to give Queen Raquesis and her consort separate rooms, and so she and Finn were forced into each other’s company again. He retreated to the corner with a stack of books and maps, and for a moment it might have been the dismal wilds of Thracia once more, with Finn waging his eternal one-man battle against everything that wasn’t House Leonster.

“Leif tells me you’re his tactician now,” she said over her embroidery hoop once the silence grew boring. 

“Yes. His Highness was aided by a former priest of the Edda order for a time, but August has returned to New Thracia in the company of Princess Altena.”

“Leaving you as the most qualified party.” Raquesis was willing to give credit where it was due. “But, my lord husband, I do not understand why this August was necessary at all. What qualifications did some defrocked priest have over Leonster’s most notable tactical prodigy?”

“How did you know August was ejected from the order?” Finn’s voice issued from behind a map of Northern Agustria; the paper did not so much as crinkle.

“I guessed.” Rather, already Raquesis had more facility in decoding the subtleties of Finn’s tone and posture. “What got him thrown out? Bothering women?”

“He was a party to torture.”

“Charming.”

And they had nothing to say to one another for the rest of the night. Raquesis remained at her embroidery until her eyes grew heavy. This new project, a blanket for Nanna’s baby, contained no coded messages to hold her interest. Perhaps she ought to set aside its geometric patterns in soothing colors for something more challenging.

-x-

On the third day of riding, when she’d gotten used to the dull ache in her hips and the glare of the sun, Raquesis took up the conversation again. She nudged her “gentle” horse up to Finn’s war-weathered chestnut mount and leaned in her saddle as though whispering an endearment to her husband.

“But my dear, I see it now. Leif made you his tactician to keep you off the front lines.”

Because she did see it, all of it— the tension in his face at the end of each day’s ride, the way he would grip at his left arm when he thought no one was watching. And now she saw Finn’s brows draw together even as he tried, tried so very hard, to keep his expression neutral and his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.

“I will serve His Highness in whatever capacity he finds appropriate.”

“Of course,” she said, and Raquesis did enjoy feeling a familiar purr at the back of her throat as she formed the words. “When has it ever been otherwise?”

It was an old game, toying with Finn like a lioness with a colt under her paws. It livened the journey to Agusty, for certain, just as games with her captors had livened the years of her imprisonment. Only at the gates of Agusty did she feel something else, something fresh and startling, as the young sovereign of Agustria rode forth to meet him. Raquesis expected the black horse, the sable armor that rebuffed the sun’s rays, the black velvet coat that cloaked him in vengeance and mourning. This did not scare her in the least; she only smiled in a dry amusement until King Ares lifted his visor, and she caught sight of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, of stray locks of gilded hair.

She was seeing Eldigan, and the sight stole away her breath.  
   
-x-  
_Eldigan left Agusty with an unusually curt farewell._

_“Do not expect me here again soon,” he cautioned her, and she was given to understand that already there was something politically noxious in the occupation of Southern Agustria, something that would fatally undermine Eldigan with their own people were he to be seen often in the midst of the Grannvale forces. Yet here Eldigan was abandoning his own sister to it, rather than letting her go home to Nordion or— better still— taking her with him to Silvail, where the true rot of Agustria sat on a stolen throne, gloating over his escape from justice._

_Nor did Raquesis even get to keep her old companions from Nordion, for the Cross Knights went with Eldigan. In lieu of the brothers who had served her during the campaigns against the fallen lords of the south, she was given Finn._

_“You,” she said once Quan and Ethlyn had bustled off to do mischief someplace else in the capital. “Tucked into bed like good children, sent to play like good children… what is this?”_

_Finn shot her a look through the long fringe of his bangs that was not entirely the look a deferential young squire ought to give a princess of the Hezul line._

_“My lord and lady know we are not_ good children. _Lord Sigurd doesn’t, and we’re supposed to keep it that way.”_

_“Princess Ethlyn knows?” Raquesis felt a queasy moment of shame, akin to what she might have felt had her mother been alive to hear about the night with Eldigan. “About both of us?”_

_“My lord’s inclinations were known to my lady before they were wed,” said Finn as though it were a matter of preferring ale over wine, as so many easterners did. “Your lord brother’s inclinations beyond his marriage appear to be common knowledge among half the folk of Agustria.”_

_“It’s not the same as having proof,” Raquesis muttered, for the enormity of having lain with her brother and trespassed on the vows of his marriage washed over her now, quite decoupled from the thrill of the act itself._

_This was not the most auspicious way to begin any kind of companionship, but within weeks of Eldigan’s departure, a new concern drove her to request that Finn accompany her on a ride outside Agusty’s castle walls._

_“I’m late.” The news tumbled out even before they’d left the stables._

_“Not any more than usual,” Finn observed as he handed her the reins to her pony._

_At first Raquesis thought he was merely being discreet, so she bit her tongue and waited until they were a comfortable distance outside Agusty before continuing the confession._

_“I didn’t mean late for our appointment. I’m_ late _.”_

_She meant her late in her courses, now ten days overdue._

_“You’ll have to marry me,” she said, for that was the excuse they were meant to use, the cover Lord Brother and Quan had provided them._

_She expected Finn to blush, to trip over his words, to show himself as someone not up to her standards. Instead, he thrust up his chin and looked more fierce than she’d ever seen him in battle, all pale cheeks and cold eyes. From the way his hands held the reins she knew they were white-knuckled inside their gloves._

_“I’ll pray for you,” was all he said in return, and not another word passed between them for the remainder of the outing._


End file.
